The Bab’s writings were not incitements to commit robbery, murder and treason. That is a distortion of the facts.
You certainly are in denial about the history, what the Muslims did to the Babis, to the Bab and to Baha’u’llah. You disregard all that unwarranted persecution,
based solely upon the fact that it was a new religion that threatened the standing religion of Islam.
Are you talking about the foolish attempt on the life of the Shah by two crazed Babis? The pistol they used was a weapon that was incapable of killing anyone. What a joke. BTW, this is all documented in
God Passes By. That is the “real history” of the Baha’i Faith from those who were closest to it and knew what really happened. Here is an excerpt from the book.
“Obsessed by the bitter tragedy of the martyrdom of his beloved Master, driven by a frenzy of despair to avenge that odious deed, and believing the author and instigator of that crime to be none other than the Sháh himself, a certain Sádiq-i-Tabrízí, an assistant in a confectioner’s shop in Tihrán, proceeded on an August day (August 15, 1852), together with his accomplice, an equally obscure youth named Fathu’lláh-i-Qumí, to Níyávarán where the imperial army had encamped and the sovereign was in residence, and there, waiting by the roadside, in the guise of an innocent bystander, fired a round of shot from his pistol at the Sháh, shortly after the latter had emerged on horseback from the palace grounds for his morning promenade. The weapon the assailant employed demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt the folly of that half-demented youth, and clearly indicated that no man of sound judgment could have possibly instigated so senseless an act......” God Passes By, p. 62
The 20,000 Bahis who were slaughtered is well documented history. It is in
God Passes By.
Apostates to what? Traitors to what? No, they had
a new revelation from God that superseded Islam. Too bad the Muslims did not like it. The unimaginable tortures inflicted upon the Babis as the result of the one incident described above were published in European newspapers. For example (continued from above):
“The reign of terror which ensued was revolting beyond description. The spirit of revenge that animated those who had unleashed its horrors seemed insatiable. Its repercussions echoed as far as the press of Europe, branding with infamy its bloodthirsty participants......
The first to suffer on that calamitous day was the ill-fated Sádiq, who was instantly slain on the scene of his attempted crime. His body was tied to the tail of a mule and dragged all the way to Tihrán, where it was hewn into two halves, each of which was suspended and exposed to the public view, while the Tihránís were invited by the city authorities to mount the ramparts and gaze upon the mutilated corpse. Molten lead was poured down the throat of his accomplice, after having subjected him to the torture of red-hot pincers and limb-rending screws. A comrade of his, HájíQásim, was stripped of his clothes, lighted candles were thrust into holes made in his flesh, and was paraded before the multitude who shouted and cursed him. Others had their eyes gouged out, were sawn asunder, strangled, blown from the mouths of cannons, chopped in pieces, hewn apart with hatchets and maces, shod with horse shoes, bayoneted and stoned. Torture-mongers vied with each other in running the gamut of brutality, while the populace, into whose hands the bodies of the hapless victims were delivered, would close in upon their prey, and would so mutilate them as to leave no trace of their original form. The executioners, though accustomed to their own gruesome task, would themselves be amazed at the fiendish cruelty of the populace. Women and children could be seen led down the streets by their executioners, their flesh in ribbons, with candles burning in their wounds, singing with ringing voices before the silent spectators: “Verily from God we come, and unto Him we return!” As some of the children expired on the way their tormentors would fling their bodies under the feet of their fathers and sisters who, proudly treading upon them, would not deign to give them a second glance. A father, according to the testimony of a distinguished French writer, rather than abjure his faith, preferred to have the throats of his two young sons, both already covered with blood, slit upon his breast, as he lay on the ground, whilst the elder of the two, a lad of fourteen, vigorously pressing his right of seniority, demanded to be the first to lay down his life.
An Austrian officer, Captain Von Goumoens, in the employ of the Sháh at that time, was, it is reliably stated, so horrified at the cruelties he was compelled to witness that he tendered his resignation. “Follow me, my friend,” is the Captain’s own testimony in a letter he wrote two weeks after the attempt in question, which was published in the “Soldatenfreund,” “you who lay claim to a heart and European ethics, follow me to the unhappy ones who, with gouged-out eyes, must eat, on the scene of the deed, without any sauce, their own amputated ears; or whose teeth are torn out with inhuman violence by the hand of the executioner; or whose bare skulls are simply crushed by blows from a hammer; or where the bazaar is illuminated with unhappy victims, because on right and left the people dig deep holes in their breasts and shoulders, and insert burning wicks in the wounds. I saw some dragged in chains through the bazaar, preceded by a military band, in whom these wicks had burned so deep that now the fat flickered convulsively in the wound like a newly extinguished lamp. Not seldom it happens that the unwearying ingenuity of the Oriental leads to fresh tortures. They will skin the soles of the Bábí’s feet, soak the wounds in boiling oil, shoe the foot like the hoof of a horse, and compel the victim to run. No cry escaped from the victim’s breast; the torment is endured in dark silence by the numbed sensation of the fanatic; now he must run; the body cannot endure what the soul has endured; he falls. Give him the coup de grâce! Put him out of his pain! No! The executioner swings the whip, and—I myself have had to witness it—the unhappy victim of hundredfold tortures runs! This is the beginning of the end. As for the end itself, they hang the scorched and perforated bodies by their hands and feet to a tree head downwards, and now every Persian may try his marksmanship to his heart’s content from a fixed but not too proximate distance on the noble quarry placed at his disposal. I saw corpses torn by nearly one hundred and fifty bullets.” “When I read over again,” he continues, “what I have written, I am overcome by the thought that those who are with you in our dearly beloved Austria may doubt the full truth of the picture, and accuse me of exaggeration. Would to God that I had not lived to see it! But by the duties of my profession I was unhappily often, only too often, a witness of these abominations. At present I never leave my house, in order not to meet with fresh scenes of horror… Since my whole soul revolts against such infamy … I will no longer maintain my connection with the scene of such crimes.” Little wonder that a man as far-famed as Renan should, in his “Les Apôtres” have characterized the hideous butchery perpetrated in a single day, during the great massacre of Tihrán, as “a day perhaps unparalleled in the history of the world!” God Passes By, pp. 63-66
Treacherous apostate, lol. No, the Bab was the Primal Point, a Manifestation of God with a “new” revelation from God that the Muslims tried to squelch. How different is that from what the Pharisees did to Jesus Christ, because they were too blind to recognize that He was the Messiah, given they did not understand the full meaning of the prophecies in their scriptures. They were waiting for a Messiah made in their own image, so they could not see that Jesus partially fulfilled the prophecies for the Messiah.
It is true that Jesus did not fulfill the prophecies for the World Redeemer that was promised in scriptures of all the great religions, that was Baha’u’llah. He was
the Promised One of All Ages, the one who would fulfill most of what was prophesied in the Jewish scriptures, but nevertheless, the Jews should have recognized Jesus because He was a Manifestation of God, who was the “Herald” to the Kingdom of God.
Similarly, around the time the Bab appeared, the Muslims were waiting for Imam Mahdi who would fulfill their prophecies,but they failed to recognize that the Bab was that fulfillment. For the same reasons Jesus was persecuted the Bab was persecuted.
History repeats itself in every age.
What are these objective sources? I have been down this road with others and they have never been able to produce anything objective. Obvious detractors are not objective sources.
It is too early in the history of the Baha’i Faith for objective sources from scholarly works. All we have to date are the two sides, the detractors and the Baha’is. I have picked my side, you have picked yours.
According to the Muslims it was treason and apostasy. According to the Bab and His followers it was a “new” Revelation for God. It is as simple as that.
Oh poor Jesus. Jesus did not suffer anywhere as much as the Bab and Baha’u’llah. It is a joke to even compare them. Of course that is in the “real history” of the Baha’i Faith, the history written by those closest to those who made the history. The detractor’s history is fake news.
I am not the one who needs to wake up because I am wide awake. The Bab was a Manifestation of God. So was Baha’u’llah. I do not expect you to believe that and I don’t care what you believe because I know the Truth. I have been a Baha’i over 47 years and I have always been open to the possibility that the Bab and Baha’u’llah made false claims, because I am an open-minded person. However,
the evidence is just not there. Rather, all the evidence indicates that they were exactly who they claimed to be. That is why I am a Baha’i, not because it is an easy road to travel. Clearly, it is not easy at all.
Matthew 7:13-14
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
